"Getting Real - Motor Rifle Group in attack" Topic

Excellent short British army Film of Motor Rifle Regiment in attack.

YouTube link

OK so who has done this reasonably accurately.

Obviously not going to work at other than 1:1, but possible because the Frontage is probably no more than 500m. It does seem in our own games we tend to play at a much slower tempo than the Soviets at least anticipate and the timescales are actually much shorter than we tend to do. perhaps as Soviets we are too careful.

Super staff, takes me back to my little office in Paderborn 1986-88!

Tally Ho!

There seemed to be some remote controlled Russian tanks in formation rolling across modelled terrain later on. Very interesting. Love these old VHS videos. Thanks.

Great stuff, although disappointed not to see the Regimental Band in action. Wonder if Elhiem will make one? Also 1985 was the year I left college and went to work for Military Survey in Feltham!

UshCha, you are spot on. To play the red hordes properly you need to think like them and not faff about.

Assuming it's accurate, those skirmish lines are nothing but an invitation to mass casualties.

I think you could really disrupt those attacks by laying smoke screen parallel to the advance, ideally cutting companies or battalions in half. Command and control is shot, advance is completely disordered, etc.

emckinney I think the point is that the mass firepower is enough to suppress the infantry they are attacking so limiting hand held anti tank fire so the troops get in very close before de-busing. Speed is the essence of these attacks so there is not enough time to kill everything. Its not thge West the infantry when de-bused have no radios so command is just Keep Going.

UshCha,

"just keep going"

Soviet command and control was not great at pre-battle briefings, especially to infantry and when you debuss at speed from any transport under fire there's no time for a briefing update, little time to orientate yourself to the battlefield and barely time to issue any orders.

You also have to avoid being crushed to death by other vehicles still advancing that have not yet debussed.

The most likely reaction of any Soviet infantry force once debussed would be a load of pinned and suppressed mixed up infantry who had little idea of where to go or what to do.

DB

So nobody has tried the anticipated tactics of the Soviet block?

Yep. Tried a number of rule sets (free and commercial) with a couple of serving officers who were keen to 'do it right'. Results were mixed but I came to the view that simplicity was the key else players will bog down in trivialities. I modified a set from FUBAR to do it, but lost interest and as I don't game any more I won't be developing it.

DB: thats why you have battle drill and the Soviets kept it simple as it suited the kind of war they wanted to fight. Orientation? Your transport is pointing towards the enemy: get in front and start firing. No need for a junior NCO to brief you. Those Dutch conscripts ahead of you have just been plastered by artillery and any still alive have probably fired off their single clip of ammo…

My 2p.

Actually, the OPFOR at Ft Irwin did it all the time with great success against just about every brigade task force the US Army could throw at them… Marines too.

Yeah it was 1:1 but they had the budget for it.

It was really something to behold. By the time the Blue forces figured out they were coming down the valley of death, the OPFOR had either overrun or bypassed all of their BPs, and we're drinking gatorade at the East gate.

Jeffers,

Well, let's just say you hope your transport is orientated correctly; having jumped out of a few the driver did not always point it in the right direction! Worse still you have no control whatsoever over the other BMPs and what they are doing and we all know that no debussed squaddie likes having several tons of BMP coming up his rear!!

But the bit about Dutch conscripts and their ammo…..I think you might be right!

DB

DB
You seem to be worried about the squaddies. How quaint! I'm working at the regimental level and more concerned about a staff appraisal with my sidearm. If you get squished by a BMP, well, you should be advancing blasting away with your AK not hanging about.

Seriously though, there is always going to be confusion but if you have simple drill and the bodies then one squad/platoon going wrong/being crushed by successive waves becomes less of an issue. Scoutjock's post shows it can be effective: you just have to think Russian.

Jeffers,

re: Think like a Russian.

That's exactly what I did for a number of years! ;)

DB

Actually, the OPFOR at Ft Irwin did it all the time with great success against just about every brigade task force the US Army could throw at them… Marines too.

Yep … My Mech Bde got it's handed to it twice…

We knew that the USSR/Warpac would come streaming across the IGB after massive supporting fires from FA, CAS, etc. We developed the A-10 and gunships with long range AT missiles, etc., to help stem the flood. Along with NATO's massive FA, CAS, AFVs, Infantry AT weapons etc., all working together. I.e. combined arms warfare.

Our US/NATO priority targets were ADA and C3, for obvious reasons. Whether either NATO or the USSR/WP TTP would have worked ? And not incite a Nuc/WMD exchange ? Well we all should just be glad we never had to find out other than on FTXs and gaming boards.

However, as we are often told/reminded, "Amateurs study Tactics, Professional study Logistics". I think both sides running out of ammo of all types, etc., might have been a critical factor.

Infantrymen [like me !] would have been reduced to using rifles, bayonets, clubs, stones, etc. to decide the conflict. And that would be without the use of WMDs …

If the WWIII lasted longer than about 3-6 months. And no one started tossing around WMDs. Of course this is just my opinion … I could be wrong ?

DB

I bet you have an in-depth knowledge of Salisbury Cathederal too! 😉

Legion

I suspect not…☹️

Reminds me of a story one of my old colleagues told me. He was briefing some shiny new officers on the Soviet army and mentioned the stocks of T34s (that dates him and me) they still held in reserve. One officer stated they would be no match for a Chieftain. My colleague had to point out that by the time the T34s rolled the most effective weapon in his arsenal would be a pointy stick.

Y'know, this is all tempting me to get my toys out and look at them again. I might even make that Danish Saab Draken that's been sitting in my wardrobe for a year.

The Soviets exemplified Stalin's saying something about "Quantity has a quality of it's own." … Or something like that.

But yes, as all the "good" stuff got destroyed, T34/85s would be the last sent in. As that is all they had left.

I'm not sure of exact GSVG units composition, but I doubt they still had M-30 in 1985. We were located in the mainland, and had them replaced in 1986 with D-30. Our neighbour motor rifle regiment had 100 mm Rapiras. No BTR's in 1985 too, but this may be was bcs of the climate zone.
Also I'd like to point one thing…the command might be sacrificing a whole regiment for a certain purpose, but a squad commander will care about his soldiers and he will not have his APC's tramping them in the mud.
From what I've seen during joint drills, motor rifle guys were acting more like this:
YouTube link

Also, before attack an opponent will be enjoying barrage of our artillery unit…and you really don't want to be on the receiving side of it, especially when we got MBRL in addition to D-30s.

Cheers Barin, your insight is most welcome, as was the link. They certainly don't look mixed up to me and seem to know where to go and what to do…. I'm glad you underlined the importance of artillery preparation too.

To drag the thread back from my reminiscing to UshCha's initial question – what's your view?

Barin

And yes, we all knew of the Soviet's predilection for "hub-to-hub" artillery.

Well…I'm not a game designer and my army experience is of lowly howitzer operator and radio unit operator sergeant, but I've been taking part in a couple of large scale drills together with motor rifle and tank units and we were practicing "rolling fire wall".
We were deployed several km behind tankers/MR. We were targeting predetermined targets before they were moving.
Then they moved forward, and almost immediatley we were packing and following them. Next position could be 5-10 km forward, and next barrage could be on called targets very close to tankers/MR or further in enemy deployment up to our operaional range of 13-15 km.
We were practicing the move of up to 40 km/day. Not sure how it can be adapted into gaming, but this is my 2cc

Sounds about right with the intel we had … Thanks !

Funny story – a Russian General observing the maneuvers at the NTC one time remarked, "Your guys are better at this than we are."

Of course the OPFOR practiced it regularly and did it live once or twice a month. Well, laser tag live with MILES…

Yeah … the OPFOR at the NTC clearly had the home field advantage. Some times it's better to learn from mistakes as opposed to winning and come away with a false sense of superiority, I guess.

But as I said both times at the NTC, once as a Bde Motor Officer and then Mech Co Cdr … we got our butts kicked …

Thanks Barin, that is really interesting. 👍

Very cool video. I love Youtube.